


Looking at happiness

by Ilrona



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Kylo Ren, At least his boyfriend likes it, Don't ask Ben's family about his art, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilrona/pseuds/Ilrona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux’s father isn’t talking to him since he quit his awful job as a high school math teacher, and Ben – Kylo Ren, an artist who only paints gory deaths – struggles with his art again: after having to paint his dad’s death, his mentor now told him to paint a self-portrait.</p><p>One night, Hux realizes: even if life isn’t perfect, being Ben’s boyfriend is great, and they’re quite happy together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking at happiness

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to [this one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7502604) (which is Finnrey + Kylux, and both fics have their title from the same song). There are many references to that story here, though I think you can understand this fic even without reading that first.
> 
> Title is from the lyrics of ‘Glass, Concrete & Stone’ by David Byrne.

The chair in front of the easel, though old and paint-splattered, is sturdier than it looks. Hux sits onto Ben’s lap, Ben’s body under him solid and warm.

“Hi, Armitage.” They aren’t fond of pet names, but Ben can fill Hux’s unyielding name (often mocked by the students – only behind Hux’s back, but he knew about it) with just as much affection as any  _baby_  or  _love_. “You done with whatever you were working on?”

“An essay on first-order logic. It was finished yesterday, I revised it now. What are  _you_  painting?”

Ben places the paintbrush onto the little table next to the easel. He wraps his arms around Hux’s waist and pulls him closer on his lap.

“I talked with Snoke about the painting of my dad again. He criticized some things, basically a repeat of his words after first seeing it. But he really liked that it captured that one last moment before his death. And the expression – the sadness – was a good choice too, he said. Which you helped with, so thank you for that.” Ben gives Hux a peck on the cheek. Hux smiles a little at him, proud of his boyfriend – and of himself, too, for being able to help despite not knowing that much about art. “And he said I should do a self-portrait next. I’ve never done that. Well, I did once when I was Uncle Luke’s student, but that was just a boring sketch, and I was so young then. This self-portrait would be painted by Kylo Ren, not Uncle Luke's student.”

Hux frowns. “You would be dead?”

“On the painting, yeah. And if I have both paintings in the exhibition, I think that would make people less upset. I mean, it’s not that awful to paint your dad dead if you also paint yourself dead, right? And it would be like Darth Vader!”

Ben must see the lack of recognition on Hux’s face, because he huffs in annoyance. Hux has a hard time keeping track of even his boyfriend’s oeuvre (though he loves it), he can’t be expected to know every painting of other artists, not even Kylo Ren’s greatest inspiration.

“He painted that self-portrait where his whole body is in lava, but we can see his face. His expression shows grief, but not pain. It’s an incredible painting. He created it just after his wife died, he had a falling out with his mentor, and he had to give his newborn children – mom and Uncle Luke – to other families because he knew he wouldn’t be able to be the father he should be. And all this tragedy is reflected in the painting. I want something like that.”

“But you’re happy, aren’t you? I mean, your family isn’t very fond of your art, but at least your mentor and your boyfriend are both there for you. Nothing awful is happening to you – not like it was with your grandfather.”

Ben scoffs. “So what? I can paint a tragic self-portrait even if I’m happy.”

Hux looks at the canvas, bright in the morning sunshine. The right half is a landscape of snow and tall black trees, with a few red footprints, like some old monochrome photograph with a few drops of blood fallen onto it. The left half is completely empty.

“I know most self-portraits only show the face, but that's not what I want. I don’t exactly know the position of my body yet, though I have some sketches. I would be lying in the snow, or perhaps sitting with my back against a tree. Do you remember the painting I was working on just before we started dating? Seeing the snow on the streets now, I remembered I once worked on that, though only because I didn’t want to paint dad. This will be a bit different, though. The body in the snow in that picture was lying face down, but in this one Snoke said I must show the face – my face.”

Hux leans closer to the canvas, examining the tiny little snowflakes trembling on the dark branches, painted with the smallest brush and looking so real Hux almost reaches out, expecting them to feel cold under his fingertips.

Usually the landscape in Kylo Ren's paintings, if there's any, is, though very atmospheric, only a quickly painted background with not many little details, not as important as the focus: the bleeding, mangled human body. But not here.

Hux remembers Ben’s struggle with painting that picture of his dad – trying to create a painting of himself dead would be even worse.

* * *

Ben often claims he doesn’t give a fuck about his family, but he lurks on his adoptive little sister’s blog a lot. He doesn’t care about Rey’s cookie recipes or her amateur photographs of flowers: he uses her blog to know what his family is doing.

Right now, the Organa-Solo family (except the son) is on a vacation. While Hux and Ben are shivering through the cold days of the winter in the city, breaking frozen puddles under their feet and getting their shoes soaked with icy water, bundled up in coats and scarfs and woolen caps, they are having the time of their lives under a tropical sun.

The first photo Ben shows Hux is of the family and Finn, standing on the pier in front of a huge yacht. Hux isn’t sure who made the photo – they probably asked a random stranger. Rey has an arm around Finn’s bare shoulders, both of them wearing matching sunglasses. Ben's father makes a strange gesture with his arms while grimacing, and his mother looks half-amused, half-annoyed. Uncle Luke is there too, standing next to his sister with a frown, or perhaps he’s just squinting because of the harsh sun. Under the photo is the caption:  _Han said this one has no octopuses – we’ll see! :D_

“What does that mean?”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Once dad bought this yacht from some criminals and it was full of dead octopuses. Well, not  _full_ , it was only three, but that’s exactly three more than should be on a yacht. It’s a running joke in my family.”

He clicks and the next photo is a close-up of Finn, without sunglasses but wearing a straw hat. He’s grinning from ear to ear. Hux doesn’t remember ever seeing him so honestly happy while he was Hux’s tenant. Probably because he wasn’t. Hux usually doesn’t make others happy, especially not when they have to live in the same apartment, no matter how cheap the place was compared to many others. The caption of the photo reads:  _My cute boyfriend! Finn’s the best!!! <3_

Ben closes the laptop and rolls onto his back on the bed. “They’re so sappy. I bet mom and dad love them. They’re sipping those cocktails with the little umbrellas on the beach and thinking about how good it is weird Ben isn’t with them!”

Hux sighs, wishing to say something comforting but not knowing what. He can’t do anything about Ben’s parents disliking his art – they already saw the picture of Han Solo with the blood pouring from the wound in his chest, even if only in an art magazine and not yet exhibited. Hux doesn’t know all the details: Ben talked with them on the phone while Hux was working, and when he got home, he saw that Ben was grumpier than ever before, scowling when Hux tried to kiss him after dinner. He planned to have sex that night, even daydreamed about it during work, but then he didn't even try with Ben being so ill-tempered.

Next morning, Ben told him what happened. He isn’t the kind of person who can keep their grievances hidden inside them for long. He ranted and ranted while Hux was shaving:  _Can’t I paint what I want, who are they to tell me they don’t like it and expect me to care_ followed by  _Should I paint only boring shit like Uncle Luke used to, would that be better?_

Hux also suspects that, just like painting brutal murders isn’t the ideal job for Ben according to his family, Armitage Hux isn’t the kind of boyfriend Ben’s family was hoping for. He could be worse, sure, but… he’s not charming, not funny, he doesn’t smile often. He’s not like Finn, who’s such a warm and kind person that even Hux, who wasn’t even close to a friend, could see it. He can't smile like Finn on that photo – he could try, but it would probably look fake. Ben once laughed at the bitter expression on the photo on his ID card. Hux tried to convey calm confidence, but somehow he ended up looking like he hates the universe.

“I’m sorry, Ben.”

“Why?” Ben grumbles, rolling onto his side and looking at Hux with a frown. “It’s not your fault. Whatever. Who cares about them. We’re… happy, right? The two of us?” For a moment, Ben’s brown eyes look unsure. Hux wants to wipe that uncertainty out of him.

“Yes. I’m glad we’re boyfriends. We’re happy. I mean, I am.”

Ben’s lips curl into a smirk as his fingers start to play with the little red buttons on Hux’s shirt – Hux allows it once he makes sure with a quick glance there isn’t any paint on his hand. Ben opens the first one, then the one under it. “I’m happy too.”

They fuck on the bed. When Hux is already deep inside Ben, grabbing onto his hips and watching as Ben’s fingers almost tear the sheet apart, he suddenly hears his ringtone. He remembers throwing his briefcase onto the sofa in the living room – the phone must be there. Hux doesn’t have friends other than Ben, so it’s likely work related. It could be important.

Hux moves back, his dick leaving Ben’s body. He glances down at the broad shoulders and the pale, smooth back – there’s only one little scar near the small of his back, a barely noticeable relic of a childhood adventure. Ben told him the story when Hux asked about it the first time he saw the scar: many years ago the reckless boy had decided to roll down a hill without checking first what is at the end of the road, right into a thorny bush.

The phone continues to ring while Hux thinks about the scar. Fuck it, he decides. He will fuck Ben, and after that he will check the phone. It can’t be that important.

When he slides in again he can hear the relieved moan Ben muffles into the pillow under his cheek. Hux allows himself a few shallow, languid thrusts to get used again to the heat and the tightness, the incredible grip around his dick, and also to tease Ben a bit. Then he starts to move quicker and harsher, thrusting his dick deeper, moaning loudly as Ben’s ass clenches around his cock, Ben’s body trembling under him in pleasure.

* * *

Hux watches the currently biggest blob of the lava lamp float lazily upwards, then collide with another blob. It’s oddly soothing to follow the seemingly unpredictable paths of the orange blobs, even though the lava lamp is very tacky, at least in Hux’s opinion.

Even if the lava lamp was scientifically proven to be tacky, Hux would let it stay in their home. A successful relationship needs this thing called ’compromise’. Ben doesn't throw his dirty clothes everywhere and he always takes his combat boots off when he gets home. He doesn’t put his motorcycle helmet (or anything that doesn’t belong there) onto the clean dinner table. He especially doesn’t leave his fork on the chair for Hux to get stabbed in the ass when plopping down after a long day. Ben isn’t always successful (he blames it on messiness somehow being an irremovable part of his soul, and also on entropy), but it's much better now than it used to be.

In return, Hux lets Ben put useless knickknacks everywhere. Some of them are awful, like this lava lamp or the replica of Darth Vader’s most famous sculpture (an unsettling mix between a skull and a helmet) that stares down at him when Hux wakes up in the morning or when Ben fucks or rides him on his back. But the reproductions of Kylo Ren’s paintings on the walls are pretty cool.

Though not everyone thinks so. When Hux mentioned it once to Mitaka during lunch break, his co-worker looked at him with wide eyes and a theatrical shiver.  _Don’t those awful paintings give you nightmares? He paints only dead people!_ Hux shrugged, told Mitaka that he loves them, and he got them for free because Kylo Ren is his boyfriend. Mitaka looked at him with even wider eyes.  _Someone who paints like that must be an awful boyfriend._ Hux just smiled, feeling something warm in his chest as he thought about Ben.  _Oh, not at all._

Hux leaves the lava lamp when his stomach grumbles for food and walks into the kitchen. Ben is there too, wolfing down a plate of pasta. Hux chooses a ready-made sandwich, bought yesterday in the grocery store.

Ben swallows the pasta in his mouth before he asks: “Is your dad… um. Did he call or something?”

“No.” Hux pulls the cucumber out of his sandwich and places it onto Ben’s plate. “But I don’t care.”

When Hux was still a high school math teacher, Brendol Hux called him up every month to talk with him for about five minutes, and even visited him once or twice a year. They had awkward, stilted conversations, and Hux wasn’t looking forward to them, but it was still proof that his father was proud of him, or at least he wasn’t disappointed in him. He asked the same question every time:  _How is work?_  And Hux said:  _Great_. Either his father didn’t notice that Hux was lying through his teeth, that his son hated teaching those kids with every fiber of his being, or he did know and simply didn’t care, as long as Hux was doing what his father wanted.

He hasn’t heard his father’s voice since he stopped teaching. Hux wrote him an e-mail explaining why he quit, and got no answer. Now he has a job at the illustrious Seswenna Bank while sometimes his essays and articles are published in one of the most well-known mathematics journal.

“Obviously you care,” Ben says, spearing the gift cucumber onto his fork. “You worked, what, almost a whole decade in a job you hated because that's what your dad wanted.” When Hux remains silent, unable to refute, Ben asks: “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but… Why was it so awful, actually?”

Hux shrugs, extracting another slice of cucumber from the sandwich. Ben brings his fork closer so Hux can put the cucumber onto it.

“I once caught a student drawing a doodle of my corpse into her exercise book. It was quite detailed – she even included my sideburns, accurately drew the pattern on my sweater vest, and used three different shades of red for my wounds. Perhaps she was your fan, I don't know. And under the doodle she wrote ‘Death to the tyrant of the Empire of Math’.”

Ben stares at him with a weird expression, like he can't decide whether he should be pissed off on his boyfriend's behalf, horrified or amused.

“I admit I was a strict and demanding teacher, but I just wanted them to learn, and I didn’t want the classroom to devolve into a chaotic hellhole! I forbade eating, drinking, talking, putting their feet onto the chair, using the phone or doing anything not related to the current math exercise. I made them call me Mr. Hux and I called them all by their surnames instead of the silly nicknames some of them would have preferred. When I caught someone cheating, I took a grade off the final grade. I gave them homework for the holidays too and I had oral tests every day and written tests once a week. But these are not any worse than my father's methods! Did you know that I had to complete 100 equations every weekend for my father? If I wasn’t done with them until Sunday evening, or too many of the solutions were wrong, I got 150 for next weekend. I don’t know why father was so much more successful as a teacher. Because he’s more charming? Or maybe that generation was different…”

Hux’s words peter out, and he takes another bite from the sandwich, grinding ham and cheese under his teeth viciously. Just thinking about his previous job is starting to make him feel annoyed. At least in the bank his colleagues care about what he has to say – Mitaka alone looks at him with more attention than all the kids put together. Fine, there were one or two students who did listen, but those were a few small islands in a seemingly endless sea of disinterest. He often felt like talking to a wall would have been less of a waste of his time. 

“Teenagers are really difficult to deal with. I told you before, I think, how hard it was to tutor Rey, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to teach a whole class. Though I wasn’t a nice and obedient teenager either, so I can’t really judge them. I think I made Uncle Luke’s life harder than all his other students. They also really admired him as an artist, while I found his paintings very uninteresting.”

“I don’t know anything about his paintings,” Hux admits.

“Ha!” Ben smirks. “As a teenager I was always told what an incredible privilege it is to learn art from Luke Skywalker himself, but people don’t even know his art anymore! His most famous painting is titled  _Binary Sunset_ , twilight in a desert with two suns. He was nineteen when he did that, which, okay, is sort of impressive. He continued painting boring landscapes for a while, but then he gave it up. He can scoff at my gory pictures like my parents and Rey, but at least I’m still painting.”

* * *

Hux draws the crimson curtain – he used to have plain white ones, but Ben wanted these, and Hux remembered: compromise is needed in a good relationship. Without opening the window or stepping onto the balcony he can’t see much, but he knows that there must be a few stray cars rushing through the night down on the mostly empty street, and that the orange street lights and the colorful neon letters of the bar near the corner won’t be turned off until dawn.

He also knows it’s a very cold night. Pressing his palm against the windowpane feels like touching ice.

When he looks up, he can see the dark, empty sky above them.

“There are no stars.”

“Maybe it’s cloudy, Armitage.”

Hux frowns, pulling his hand away from the freezing window. “They disappeared. It’s the light pollution.”

He turns around. Ben is staring up at him, sitting on the edge of their bed. “They’re still there, we just can’t see them in the city. In our summer house, when I was a little boy, I sometimes stargazed with mom and dad. Come back. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s okay.” Hux walks to the bed quickly. He remembers that when they first started living together the floor between the bed and the bathroom door was always littered with something. Once, he stubbed his toes against one of Ben’s dumbbells. It  _hurt_. Ben looked so apologetic as he pressed ice against Hux’s toes, but his murmured  _so sorry_ s didn’t make it hurt less. When Hux, waking up in the middle of the night to pee or yanked out of his dreams by the shrill sound of the alarm, stumbled, still half-asleep, to the bathroom, he had to walk across the room as if it were a minefield.

Now there's nothing but soft black carpet under Hux’s feet. Even if not everything is always exactly in its place, at least Ben makes sure to not leave his stuff lying around on the floor.

In the bed, they lie down under the blankets, pulled up to their shoulders, facing each other.

“What was your nightmare about, Ben?”

Hux stares at his boyfriend’s face, illuminated by the little lamp on their bedside table. Ben looks embarrassed, but he doesn't turn away, lets Hux look at him.

“It’s the painting. I dreamed about it – that I was dying in that snowy forest. I know it’s stupid. But… Do you remember what you said when you talked about why you like Kylo Ren’s art back when you disliked me for those silly reasons, just before I told you I’m Kylo Ren?” A smile brightens Ben’s face, filled with both fondness and smugness at the memory. Then the smile disappears. “That the figures are sort of dehumanized? Or depersonalized. You said something like that. And I think you were right, because when they didn’t have faces and personalities I didn’t have to think about their life or their feelings, because it wasn’t about them. But then Snoke told me to paint my father – and I did it, but who wants to think about what their dad would feel in the last moments of his life? And I also don't want to think about my… Whatever. Let’s just go back to sleep. Forget about it.”

Hux frowns at him. “You don’t have to die in that painting.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “That’s what I do. I paint dead people.”

“I know. But on a picture it’s sometimes hard to decide whether someone is already dead or just dying. In your self-portrait you will be dying, sure, but what if you will be saved? You will be rescued from the cold woods and taken somewhere where you can be healed. Would that work?”

“I suppose that could work. If I'm not decapitated or depicted in some other unquestionably dead way.” Ben smiles a little. “Thank you. I'll think about that when I paint it.”

The silence that settles down around them is comfortable. They should go to sleep, but it’s nice to just look at each other.

“You like your job, right, Armitage? I mean. It’s better than being a teacher? Because I encouraged you to quit, and I’d hate it if you thought the bank is even worse.”

“Nothing could be as awful as that school. Though… The bank is a million times better, but. When strangers on the street look at me, they don’t recognize me. I mean, I know few people actually know that Ben Organa-Solo is Kylo Ren, but many do know Kylo Ren’s art, even if it’s somewhat controversial. But after  _I_ die, no one will remember me. I won’t leave anything significant behind.”

Hux has never told him this – or to anyone else. “Is that what you want? To be famous? To change the world?” Ben doesn’t sound mocking. Hux is sure his father would. But Ben seems to be only surprised.

“No, not really. I just think about it sometimes, but it’s not like I had ambitious dreams when I was younger that I failed to achieve. My father told me I will be a math teacher, and I never questioned whether I could be anything else, not when I thought it would be great as a child and not later when I knew it’s the exact opposite of great – until I met you. Seeing you go against your family’s wishes and painting whatever you wanted was inspiring.”

Ben grins. “I’m glad.” He yawns suddenly, turning his face into the pillow to hide his open mouth. “Let’s sleep now.”

The darkness that envelops them after the lamp is turned off is wonderfully warm and somehow reassuring under the heavy blanket and so close to the heat of Ben’s body.

He thinks about Ben asking him whether they are happy, and then both agreeing that yes, they are. And – perhaps they will be happy for a very long time. Why not? They fit together, don’t they? If nothing gets in their way – and Hux can’t think of anything right now – what could separate them?

They could get married, maybe, Hux thinks, his heart suddenly beating so wildly. He can imagine Ben’s big body wrapped in an elegant suit at the wedding, though Hux has actually never see him wear anything like that. He wouldn’t even have to wear shoulder pads like Hux, his shoulders are already so broad. He works out a lot for someone whose job is to sit in front of a canvas.

Maybe they shouldn’t get married now, maybe they should wait some more, but – one day. And after the wedding they could stay together until they become old and grey, until Hux’s eyes get so bad he won’t be able to see the numbers without glasses and it will take Ben twice as long to paint something because his hands would be weaker, but they would still be happy, together. He used to be so lonely once – being with Ben is so much better.

Hux feels dizzy, the possibility of such a future shining like fireworks in his mind.

Hux moves even closer, careful to keep the warm blanket on top of them, and smiles against Ben’s shoulder when Ben’s arms wrap around his waist to pull Hux to rest against his chest.


End file.
